Some more thoughts. After all, the point of a discussion/argument is not simply to convince someone else of your ideas but to also convince yourself
Basically, every part of the photographic process, digital or film, is a form of manipulation. The lens bends the light focussing it on a plane. The pixels respond to the level of light and translate it to 0's and 1's, etc. It's all part of the process of taking a 3-dimensional world and transforming it into a 2-dimensional image. But dispite all of the manipulation, a photograph still bares a striking resemblance to the real world when compared to other art forms. And, at the risk of sounding redundant, that is where the power of a photograph comes from. I'm not boycotting photoshop or HDR. HDR can actually be used to make a photograph look more natural since it brings the dynamic range of the image closer to what our eyes actually see (our eyes have a much higher dynamic range than digital sensors or film). But the reason I like photographs is that I can look at a photograph and imagine myself there. I can recognize it as part of my world. It's hard to look at Van Gogh's Sunflowers and imagine they're sitting in front of you. It's just a different medium. It's dangerous to just say "It's all art, you can do whatever you want" because you belittle the strengths of all of the different mediums. Painting is not like sculpture is not like photography is not like music.
I'm basically trying to say that it is important to know the strengths of the medium you're working in so that you can take advantage of them instead sacrificing them for the next new trick.
(By the way, I really am a total noob and I'm just trying to sort all this out to see where I fit in. All the above is simply what I've been able to figure out so far. I could easily be swayed by a well stated argument in one direction or another.)